Which concentration camp did you escape from? The story of the first successful escape from the Auschwitz death camp

The concentration camp was a monstrous phenomenon of war, hundreds of thousands of people died there. But for some prisoners, the concentration camp was not a death sentence. For those who dared to escape and survived.

Most impressive

We know little about the life of Russian soldiers in concentration camps. The great escape from the concentration camp of the group led by fighter pilot Mikhail Devyatayev, a native of the Mordovian village of Torbeevo, is also not very well known to the people. At the end of the war in 1945, all of them ended up in the Peenemünde concentration camp on the island of Usedom in the Baltic Sea on the border of Germany and Poland. FAA missiles were tested there. Two members of the group, who were delivered to the island before Devyatayev, were going to escape by boat, but Devyatayev convinced them that in this case there was little chance of escape, but it was quite possible to leave the island on the Heinkel bomber that was based there. The escape was prepared meticulously, first Devyatayev got into the group servicing the airfield, studied the instruments with the help of a German anti-aircraft gunner, who sympathized with the Russians, helped them and did not betray them. When they began to guess about escape plans, the group decided to flee. The actions of the 21-minute escape unfolded truly dramatically: at first the plane did not take off, Devyatayev could not understand why for some time, then it turned out that he did not take into account the position of the rudder trim tabs, the group members manually set them to the “takeoff” position. The plane took off, but too abruptly, and began to lose speed and altitude. Finally, having figured out the steering control, Devyatayev straightened out the car he was already chasing german fighter. He fired almost all the ammunition, but our pilot managed to hide in the clouds. Then he flew along the sun to Soviet positions, where he was shot down by our anti-aircraft guns, but was eventually able to make a successful hard landing.

The most successful

The escape from the Sobibor concentration camp has recently been widely covered in the press, and several detailed books have been published. This episode is considered the most successful escape from a concentration camp. However, it also has many “white spots”. Immediately upon arrival at the camp, a group of Soviet Jewish soldiers, who were included in the work team, immediately began to look for ways to escape. Officer Alexander Pechersky was persuaded by other prisoners, who had also been hatching escape plans for a long time and unsuccessfully, not to attempt an escape small group, since the rest would then be shot. He agreed to flee with the entire camp. The plan was to kill as many Germans as possible one by one. On October 14 everything was ready. The SS men were invited to the workshops for fitting, etc., and there they were destroyed one by one. Before the guards became suspicious, 11 people were killed. Then everyone ran through the barbed wire and minefield. Three hundred prisoners managed to cross it. About fifty survived.

Most famous

Thanks to famous book“The Great Escape” and the film of the same name by John Sturges with Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough, this escape became world famous. It was prepared by Allied Air Force prisoners of war - Americans, British, Canadians, Australians. They did a tremendous job. The escape plan was carried out by 250 people with real clear and decorative Anglo-Saxon training. The leader of the escape, Roger Bushell, was called “Big X”; each tunnel had its own name – Tom, Dick and Harry. The prisoners worked for a year, there were many difficulties and dramatic events. The Harry Tunnel was completed in March 1944. It was then that I had to flee, since the SS leadership ordered to strengthen the camp’s rather loose security system. 270 people were planning to escape, but only 76 managed to do so, 73 of whom were caught.

The very first

The escape from the Treblinka concentration camp is perhaps one of the most famous. In the summer of 1943, the Jews imprisoned there rebelled and some of them managed to escape. According to survivors, the plan was to seize weapons, kill all the guards and liberate the entire camp. Of course, this plan failed, several rifles were stolen, but overall the escape, which began in the early morning of August 2, 1943, was catastrophically poorly prepared. To begin with, they blew up a barrel of gasoline, which was an alarm signal for the guards, but only created confusion among the prisoners. Many elderly and exhausted did not join the rebels. Most of the three hundred people who broke the wire and fled were destroyed from the towers. There is no exact data about the survivors - there are only a few of them or a few dozen. Those who fled could not navigate the forests; many were immediately caught. Only those who tried to escape alone and fell in with good people in Polish villages were able to survive.

Rudolph stood on the platform, wincing from the cold, and watched as another cattle truck slowly crawled towards the sorting dead end. There were no thoughts in his shaved head, slightly dizzy from hunger. An unprepared person, seeing for the first time what he was about to see now, would take it for nightmare. But for Rudolf it was just another day at work. The day he had to endure.

The train stopped, the guards jumped off and handed the keys to the SS officers standing on the platform. They opened the doors of the carriage and shouted in barking voices: “Alles raus! Alles raus! Everyone out! People began to fall out of the carriages in clouds of steam and fetid fumes. Those who tried to take their luggage with them had their hands beaten. The cattle cars were filled to capacity, with a hundred people in each car. People traveled for eight days without food or water. These were Jewish families "deported" by the Nazis. Oddly enough, most of the passengers on this terrible train were still alive. They stood and squinted from the bright light. They were quickly divided into two columns: women, children and old people in one direction, men in the other. Then the serious and fastidious doctor used a bamboo stick to separate ten percent of the able-bodied men and five percent of the women. They were sent to a camp. The rest were taken to " sanitization" - into gas chambers.

A year ago, Rudolph pulled out a lucky ticket. He was strong enough to work. Now the prisoner once again had to prove that he had not yet lost his strength and was able to work as part of the “Canada” unit. They were cleaners. After the passengers of the livestock car, who were able to move independently, were taken from the platform, they had to remove corpses, disabled people and those who were unable to stand up from the train. They were placed on the platform and went to sort the luggage. It was strictly forbidden to talk to the sick or provide assistance to them. After all the bags were loaded, a garbage truck arrived, into which they mixed up the living and the dead, adults and children. Next, armed with rags and disinfectants, it was necessary to wash the cars and platform from blood and human waste so that there would be no traces of what happened here. In one working day, Rudolf “sorted” several trains.

A place of death

The sorting platform was located in the so-called outer perimeter of the Auschwitz (Auschwitz) camp. A branch came here railway, daytime work was carried out here. During the day, the outer perimeter was guarded by a chain of watchtowers manned by machine gunners. However, before sunset, all prisoners had to be counted and sent to the inner perimeter, fenced with electric wire, a moat and another chain of watchtowers, where the guards from the outer perimeter moved when work was completed there.

When the deportation of the Jewish population began, no one understood what was happening. People went to a new place of residence, taking belongings and savings

In the evening, Rudolf had some free time, and he went to visit his fellow countryman Alfred. Both of them were from Slovakia, from a small town on the outskirts. When the deportation of the Jewish population began two years ago, in 1942, no one could imagine what was really happening. People went to a new place of residence, taking household belongings, savings, and clothes. All this was dumped into a huge pile immediately upon arrival at the camp, sorted and sent to the front or to poor areas of Germany. Those who passed the screening were shaved bald and had a serial number tattooed on their left chest. For Rudolf, it was “anniversary” - 28,600. That’s how many unfortunate people were behind this fence before him. He knew that almost none of them survived, since he rarely met earlier numbers.

The natural decline in Auschwitz was 20–50 people per day. People died from exhaustion, disease, and simply by an absurd accident. For example, the camp guards, while working in the outer perimeter of the construction site of some facility, were very fond of sending a newcomer to bring something that was located outside the ten by ten meter cell, which was forbidden to leave. As soon as a person left this area, a shot rang out in his back. Rudolf's friend, Alfred, worked in the morgue where all these deaths were registered.

It was one of the most peaceful places in the camp. The corpses were stacked on shelves without any refrigeration, and there was a persistent unpleasant smell in the barracks. SS officers did not come here, so fellow countrymen could talk calmly.

Death in its most terrible manifestations was a common background of local life.

As in any camp, they liked to talk about escape. However, during the two years that Rudolf spent in Auschwitz, no one had yet managed to escape

Subsequently, during interrogation at one of the trials of the Nazis, Rudolf Vrba spoke about what he had to see in Auschwitz: “In December 1942, I walked through the camp. Near the fence I noticed square holes of impressive size. Warm air flowed from there. There was no one nearby. When I looked inside, I saw many fragments of charred bones and children's heads. Children's heads almost untouched by fire. Then I didn’t understand why they didn’t burn. It was subsequently discovered that a child's head contains much more fluid than an adult's head and takes longer and at a higher temperature to burn completely."

Process massacre in the gas chambers also took place according to an optimized surreal scenario. Those condemned to death had no idea what awaited them until the very last moment. Exhausted and apathetic after long days spent in a cattle truck, they obediently walked under escort to the “dressing room”, where they stripped naked, and to complete the illusion that they had to wash, they received a piece of soap and a towel. Then the crowd was driven into a tight sealed chamber. In order for people to pack as tightly as possible, shots were fired at the entrance, and the back rows crowded in fear. The huge doors were closing. Pressing their naked bodies together, the convicts stood in complete silence for some time. Their executioners waited for the temperature inside the cell to rise to a certain level, in which the insecticidal powder Zyklon B* turns into an asphyxiating gas. After 10–15 minutes of waiting, hatches in the ceiling of the cell were opened and people in gas masks poured poisonous powder into them. Five minutes was enough for it to take effect. Then the chamber was ventilated, the corpses were removed and burned in the unquenchable ovens of the crematorium.

* - Note Phacochoerus "a Funtik:
« By an evil irony of fate, the inventor of Zyklon B, which was originally conceived as a powder against bedbugs and other pests, was a Jew. His name was Fritz Haber, in 1918 he received Nobel Prize in chemistry. After Hitler came to power, Haber was forced to emigrate from Germany. Many members of his family died in the gas chambers of Nazi concentration camps »

Escape plan

Sitting in a nook between the shelves of the morgue, Alfred and Rudolf discussed last news. A large construction site was planned in the outer perimeter. A new railway sorting platform was being built, which was supposed to serve the Hungarian Salami project. A large number of trains from Hungary were expected to arrive at Auschwitz soon. New ovens, barracks and gas chambers were built. Auschwitz reached incredible levels of power.

Rudolf, a 19-year-old youth in a worn-out Soviet overcoat, which was considered the most enviable clothing here, sat with his head in his hands.

Do you remember how they said it was moving? Just relocation... And people calmly loaded onto the trains. If only someone had told us then, if only they had warned us about what was happening here... After all, no one, no one in outside world does not know.

How to warn them? You know that there is only one way out of here - through the crematorium oven,” answered 26-year-old Alfred.

As in any camp, they liked to discuss the topic of escape. However, during the two years that Rudolf spent within the walls of Auschwitz, no one had yet managed to escape. There were two roll calls: evening and morning. Each time, all prisoners, living and dead, were taken or carried out of the barracks and laid on the ground in rows of ten. Thus, the guards quickly recalculated the total number. If someone was missing, the camp immediately raised the alarm and began a search operation. In this case, guards were on duty all night in the outer and inner perimeter, and detachments were sent to comb the surrounding area. This lasted three days, and there was never a case where the fugitives were not found. If they were alive, they were publicly hanged on the main street between the barracks. If a corpse was found, he was seated at the exit from the outer perimeter and a sign was placed in his hand with the inscription “Here I am.”

However, there was still a special underground organization in the camp that was constantly developing escape plans. Alfred knew about it and told Rudolph that at the moment there was one very risky, but very effective plan.

For the construction of new Hungarian barracks, a huge amount of wooden panels were brought into the outer perimeter, which had to be piled up. The people working to unload these shields stacked one of the piles so that it formed an internal chamber for two people. Two prisoners from those who were allowed to move around the camp (Rudolph had just transferred from Team Canada to such work!) had to quietly approach this secret pile during the day and hide inside. They will be covered with boards, and tobacco soaked in gasoline will be placed on top - it will throw the sniffer dogs off the scent. The fugitives will have to sit inside for three days, and when the external guards are removed on the fourth night, they will have to flee along the nearby river towards Slovakia.

Liberty

Rudolf and Alfred understood that they were taking a mortal risk. Was the risk worth it? After living in the camp for two years, they had achieved some positions and could expect to survive this hell. However, there were no guarantees of life in the death camp - for example, a typhus epidemic claimed almost 80 percent of the population of the women's barracks in Auschwitz. They did not even think about treating any of the sick people. Anyone who showed the slightest sign of infection was immediately sent to the gas chamber for “disinfection.”

There were no guarantees of life in the death camp. A typhus epidemic claimed almost 80% of the population of the women's barracks

Escape, albeit to war-torn Europe, provided relief from the daily horrors of death. Moreover, the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Hungary were at stake. So, after a thorough consultation behind the shelf in the morgue, the friends decided to use this chance.

On April 7, 1944, just before sunset, the wail of sirens echoed through the Birkenau camp (Auschwitz II). Two prisoners failed to show up for evening roll call! It was as if they had fallen through the ground. For three days and three nights, two hundred dogs carefully combed the camp area. Search teams were sent to neighboring villages and forests. In vain.

Meanwhile, Rudolf and Alfred sat huddled in their hiding place. In the camp they were accustomed to a meager diet, and hunger was not a problem. It was more difficult with water and with numb arms and legs. In addition, excitement and thirst almost did not allow them to sleep. Towards the evening of the third day they heard voices overhead.

What if they were hiding in this pile? - one of the guards said to the other.

Come on, we've probably walked here with dogs ten times! - answered his comrade.

But still! Let's watch?

Freezing and having pre-stocked knives at the ready, Rudolf and Alfred prepared for exposure. The quick-witted Germans began to dismantle the wooden shields. They removed one layer, then a second. The last thin layer of wood remained between them and the fugitives. And then the sirens began to wail across the camp again.

They've been caught! - one guard shouted to the other, and they immediately went to look.

However, the sirens only meant the search was called off. Rudolf and Alfred couldn't believe their luck. However, they did not yet know how lucky they really were. Dusk fell on the work site. It's time to get outside. The fugitives spent a long time rubbing their numb arms and legs and finally tried to move the wooden shield over their heads. In vain. The bodies, completely weakened by three days of insomnia, hunger and excitement, did not obey their owners. They were walled up in their makeshift cell. However, it was not in vain that the prisoners once survived the journey in a cattle truck and all the difficulties of camp life. They didn't want to give up. For three hours, the friends, centimeter by centimeter, moved the wooden panel to a distance sufficient to squeeze through. And finally freedom!

Only when they reached the surface did they realize what a huge service the meticulous German guard had rendered them. Without this unexpected help there would have been no hope of breaking out.

The world learns about Auschwitz

Fully inhaling the smell of thawed earth, the friends made their way along the bed of a small river. They were guided by a page from a children's atlas, which was given to them by friends who worked at sorting luggage.

The most important thing was to avoid the friendly-looking houses in the villages. Local Poles were evicted long ago, and German settlers from the most aggressive strata were registered in their place. The SS patrolmen had long ago taught them to treat fugitives in the most cruel way. Fortunately, friends knew about this from stories of previous escapes. As soon as prisoners asked for food or help, they were immediately handed over.

However, Rudolf and Alfred had water from a local river, which is not bad! Once they managed to hide in the forest from a German convoy. Another time is to get food, real village food: milk and eggs! And this after two years spent on thin turnip soup and very bad bread...

Closer to the Carpathians, the fugitives were lucky again: they met a partisan who knew all the local paths and managed to take them across the Slovak border without problems or unnecessary adventures. On April 21, 1944, Rudolf and Alfred slept on white sheets in real beds for the first time in two years in the Slovak village of Skalait.

A local farmer helped them establish contact with a Jewish doctor from a nearby town, who wrote down their report on the Auschwitz camp. An incredibly detailed report, listing all the trains Rudolf cleaned during his time at the Canada Division, listing all the deaths Alfred recorded during his time at the morgue. This was the first message about the Holocaust, the first truth about Auschwitz and where the trains with “deported” Jews actually went. The doctor sent a report to the Jewish community in Bratislava.

However, the report failed to save the lives of Hungarian Jews. The fact is that the Jewish community of Hungary at that moment just entered into negotiations with Nazi Germany on the exchange of “blood for goods.” Himmler offered to spare most of the Hungarian Jews in exchange for the supply of trucks and other supplies for German army. Because of these negotiations, the report on Auschwitz, although it reached the Jewish community in Hungary, was not published so as not to spoil the deal. However, Germany broke its promises, and 450 thousand Hungarian Jews were exterminated in the ovens of concentration camps.

Rudolf and Alfred were unable to fulfill their humanistic plan, but managed to escape from the death camp themselves. Subsequently, they will act as witnesses at anti-fascist trials, and more than one book will be written on their history.

Rudolph became a professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He gained worldwide fame as a researcher into diabetes and cancer.

Alfred realized himself as a journalist and writer. Under the pseudonym Josef Lanik, he wrote the book “What Dante Didn’t See.”

- parasites, antisocial elements.

Pink - homosexuals.

Purple - members of religious sects, pacifists who were persecuted in Nazi Germany.

Red and yellow - the two overlapping triangles that make up the Star of David represented the Jews.

The very first

To begin with, they blew up a barrel of gasoline, which was an alarm signal for the guards, but only created confusion among the prisoners. Many elderly and exhausted did not join the rebels. Most of the three hundred people who broke the wire and fled were destroyed from the towers. There is no exact data about the survivors - there are only a few of them or a few dozen. Those who fled could not navigate the forests; many were immediately caught. Only those who tried to escape alone and fell in with good people in Polish villages were able to survive.

Most famous

Thanks to the famous book “The Great Escape” and the film of the same name by John Sturges with Steve McQueen, James Garner and Richard Attenborough, this escape became world famous.

It was prepared by Allied Air Force prisoners of war - Americans, British, Canadians, Australians. They did a tremendous job. The escape plan was carried out by 250 people with real clear and decorative Anglo-Saxon training. The leader of the escape, Roger Bushell, was called “Big X”; each tunnel had its own name – Tom, Dick and Harry. The prisoners worked for a year, there were many difficulties and dramatic events. The Harry Tunnel was completed in March 1944.

It was then that I had to flee, since the SS leadership ordered to strengthen the camp’s rather loose security system. 270 people were planning to escape, but only 76 managed to do so, 73 of whom were caught.

The most successful

The plan was to kill as many Germans as possible one by one. On October 14 everything was ready. The SS men were invited to the workshops for fitting, etc., and there they were destroyed one by one. Before the guards became suspicious, 11 people were killed. Then everyone ran through the barbed wire and minefield. Three hundred prisoners managed to cross it. About fifty survived.

Most impressive

Two members of the group, who were delivered to the island before Devyatayev, were going to escape by boat, but Devyatayev convinced them that in this case there was little chance of escape, but it was quite possible to leave the island on the Heinkel bomber that was based there. The escape was prepared meticulously, first Devyatayev got into the group servicing the airfield, studied the instruments with the help of a German anti-aircraft gunner, who sympathized with the Russians, helped them and did not betray them. When they began to guess about escape plans, the group decided to flee.

The actions of the 21-minute escape unfolded truly dramatically: at first the plane did not take off, Devyatayev could not understand why for some time, then it turned out that he did not take into account the position of the rudder trim tabs, the group members manually set them to the “takeoff” position. The plane took off, but too abruptly, and began to lose speed and altitude. Finally, having figured out the steering control, Devyatayev leveled the car, which was already being chased by a German fighter. He fired almost all the ammunition, but our pilot managed to hide in the clouds. Then he flew along the sun to Soviet positions, where he was shot down by our anti-aircraft guns, but was eventually able to make a successful hard landing.

The most unfortunate

As one of the Jewish survivors, Shaul Hazan, said, when he worked in the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, he was not human, the reason they managed to survive was that there was nothing human left in them. Jewish members of the Sonderkommandos did the dirty work of exterminating camp prisoners - those who were stronger both physically and mentally were chosen there. In 1944, when it was clear that the camp would soon be closed and those who remained, including members of the Sonderkommando, would be shot, they decided to escape. To do this, with the help of female prisoners, they managed to obtain explosives that were produced in Auschwitz. The escape was reported in different parts of the large camp, but it was not crowned with success. On October 7, members of the Sonderkommando blow up one of the crematoria, kill several guards and flee into the forest. There they were all caught and shot. As one of the historians of Auschwitz writes, there is only evidence of possible survivors: a group of Greek Jews of fifteen people broke out, and two of them were not found.

One of the most pressing issues in modern Russian history World War II remains to this day. Many historians note that the romanticization of the events of that war affected not only literary and artistic works dedicated to that era, but also the interpretation of historical events. Behind concerts and parades the memory of specific people who accomplished a feat and saved lives, hundreds of lives. An example of this is Alexander Aronovich Pechersky, who organized a successful escape from a fascist death camp and remained a traitor to the authorities.

"SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor" - Sobibor death camp. Poland, near the village of Sobibur, 1942. Sobibor is one of the death camps that was organized to contain and exterminate Jews. During the existence of the camp from May 1942 to October 1943, about 250 thousand prisoners were killed here. Everything happened as in many other fascist death camps: most of the arriving Jews were exterminated immediately in gas chambers, the rest were sent to work inside the camp. But it was Sobibor that gave people hope - the only successful mass escape of prisoners in history was organized here.

The organizers of the escape from Sobibor were the Jewish underground, but a significant role in organizing the escape was played by a group of Soviet prisoners who were captured. The soldiers were Jews, and therefore were sent to this death camp. Among them was a Soviet officer, junior lieutenant Alexander Aronovich Pechersky.

It all started in July 1943. A group of Jewish underground workers, led by Leon Feldhendler, having learned that a group of Soviet soldiers were being held in the camp, decided to contact them and organize an uprising. The captured servicemen did not immediately agree to the uprising, since Pechersky feared that the underground might turn out to be a German provocation. However, by the end of July, all Red Army prisoners of war agreed to support the uprising.

It was simply impossible to run. The uprising had to be well organized. Pechersky developed a plan according to which it was necessary to behead the camp garrison and capture the weapons room. It took almost a week to prepare everything. As a result, on October 14, 1943, the underground began a riot. The camp management was “invited” to the work unit, ostensibly for the purpose of inspecting the work done by the prisoners. As a result, the underground managed to eliminate 12 SS officers. The camp was virtually decapitated, but the weapons room was next in line. Having removed some of the sentries, the underground fighters seemed to be close to their goal, but the camp guards managed to raise the alarm. The seizure of the “weapon shop” failed, and the prisoners decided to escape. More than 420 people fled through the fence before Wehrmacht soldiers opened fire. The situation was complicated by the fact that we had to escape through a minefield. In addition, the camp guards deployed machine guns and began firing. But the time gained and a clear plan, albeit not fully executed, helped the fugitives. The Red Army soldiers managed to transfer about 300 fugitives through the minefield, while a quarter died from mines and machine-gun fire. Of the 550 camp prisoners, about 130 did not take part in the escape, but they were shot.

Red arrow - Third camp - destruction zone. This scheme was drawn up by officer Erich Bauer, who was called the “gasmeister” in the Sobibor camp. The diagram was edited by former camp prisoner Thomas Blatt

Almost immediately, Wehrmacht soldiers and the Polish “blue police” began search operations. Unfortunately, without the support of the local population, the fugitives were doomed. In the first days, about 170 fugitives were found, declassified by locals, and immediately shot. Within a month - another 90. Some went missing. Only 53 fugitives from Sobibor managed to survive until the end of the war.

The camp itself was razed to the ground by the Nazis themselves. In its place, Wehrmacht troops plowed the land and planted a potato field. Probably to erase the memory of his only successful escape.

As for the further fate of one of the leaders of the Pechersky rebellion, Alexander, already on October 22, 1943, he, together with a group of released prisoners and surviving Red Army soldiers, was able to enter the sector of the territories occupied by the Nazis, which was under the influence of the partisans. On the same day, Alexander Pechersky joined the local partisan detachment, in which he continued to fight until his liberation. Soviet troops Belarus. In the detachment, Pechersky became a demolitionist.

However, in 1944, after the liberation of Belarus, he was accused of treason, and he was sent to the assault rifle battalion(penal battalion). There Alexander fought until the Victory, rose to the rank of captain, was wounded in the leg and became disabled. In the hospital, Pechersky met his future wife, who gave birth to his daughter. While still serving in the penal battalion, Pechersky visited Moscow, where he acted as a witness in the case of accusing the Nazis of a number of atrocities. Major Andreev, the commander of the battalion in which Pechersky served, was able to achieve this for the “traitor” to the Motherland, after he learned about the events in Sobibor and for whom it meant nothing.

Pechersky's post-war life was not easy. Until 1947, he worked in the theater, but after that, he lost his job for almost 5 years due to his “betrayal.” In the 50s, he was able to get a job as a factory worker. Pechersky lived out his life in Rostov-on-Don. The officer did not receive any awards for organizing the rebellion in Sobibor, other than the label of “traitor,” even after the collapse of the USSR.

Alexander Aronovich died on January 19, 1990. Only in 2007, residents of Rostov were able to get a memorial plaque to appear on the house where the veteran lived. In Tel Aviv, a monument was erected in honor of the feat of Pechersky and all participants in the liberation of Sobibor. Even under the USSR, a number of writers and the officer himself wrote several books about the events of Sobibor. All of them were banned by USSR censorship. For the first time, Alexander Pechersky’s book “Uprising in the Sobiborovsky Camp” appeared in Russia in 2012 at the 25th Moscow International Book Fair. The book was published with the support of the Transfiguration Foundation by the Gesharim - Bridges of Culture publishing house.

The non-glossy, non-romanticized feat of the participants in the Sobibor uprising never gained either popular recognition or fame. The story of Pechersky is not unique in its case - a story in which there is no military romance.

The Legend of the Twentieth Block

Many centuries ago, humanity came up with biblical legend about heaven and hell.

Since then, people have always dreamed of creating heaven on earth - of a happy and carefree life, without sorrows and troubles. But, as we know, this dream of an earthly paradise remained unrealizable.

But already in our time, in the 20th century, during the Second World War, it turned out that people are capable of creating an earthly hell, and one that makes all the horrors of the legendary biblical hell pale in comparison. This earthly hell during the Second World War became Hitler’s extermination camps, created by the leaders of the SS and Gestapo both in Germany itself and in other countries. European countries, - genuine death factories, organized with German economic meticulousness, using all the achievements of science and technology and intended for mass murder of people unprecedented in history.

Not only for us - people who directly experienced the war, for whom all its events are still fresh in their memory, but for all subsequent generations they will always sound like terrible curses misanthropic fascism such words as Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, Ravensbrück and many other names of Hitler's death camps. And among them, the word “Mauthausen” will remain one of the most ominous. Twenty-five kilometers from the Austrian city of Linz, where a wide highway winds through the picturesque foothills of the Austrian Alps, off to the side of the road, a large building stands on top of a mountain. From a distance you can see a high stone wall, a massive arched gate and beautiful crenellated towers above them. An inexperienced traveler, noticing this building, will think that there is probably one of those tourist attractions that Austria is so rich in - some kind of medieval castle or palace.

But if during the war years - in 1944 or at the beginning of 1945 - such an ignorant traveler would have become interested in this building and decided to get acquainted with it, turning onto the road that branches towards the mountain from the main highway, after a kilometer and a half, he came closer , would have immediately discovered his mistake and immediately turned back. He would have seen that several rows of barbed wire were stretched along the crest of the wall, that there were machine guns on the platforms of the beautiful crenellated towers above the gates, and that soldiers in helmets and SS uniforms with a skull and crossbones on the sleeves were on duty near them. He would have noticed the same flags with a skull and crossbones above the wall, and in the dark vault above the locked heavy iron gates he would have imagined something gloomy and ominous, reminiscent of an entrance from the underworld.

No, this building was not a castle of ancient times. It was truly a diabolical creation of architecture XX century, one of the most terrible places on earth - Hitler's Mauthausen extermination camp.

According to the testimony of witnesses on Nuremberg trials, according to the recollections of former prisoners, from books published after the war, we now know well the history of this terrible camp, where people were exterminated with industrial organization, with engineering ingenuity, with the dispassion of executioners with the sophistication of sadists. Here prisoners were killed on the spot with a blow from a heavy baton and slowly brought to the grave with daily beatings, here they were subjected to a painful death in gas gas chambers and burned in a crematorium, here inhumane acts were performed on living people medical experiments and lampshades were made from tattooed human skin.

But we also know that people gathered in Mauthausen from all European countries continued to fight against fascism and the International Underground Committee was created in the camp. This committee led great job among prisoners, he often saved people from death and slowly but persistently prepared for future liberation. At the signal of the International Committee on May 5, 1945, when American troops approached the camp, the prisoners of Mauthausen rebelled and freed themselves from captivity. They not only captured the camp, but also occupied several villages closest to Mauthausen, organized a perimeter defense and repelled all attacks of the SS men who sought to recapture the camp in order to destroy the prisoners there. We know that in the International Underground Committee and among the main leaders of the uprising there were many of our compatriots - Soviet people who languished in Mauthausen and managed to wage an anti-fascist struggle even in the hellish conditions of this extermination camp.

But until recently, few people knew that in the history of Mauthausen there was one event, especially dark and tragic, which seemed to forever remain legendary, mysterious, like a vague and erased legend reaching people from the depths of ancient times. This is an event that happened in early February 1945 year - uprising and the mass escape of prisoners from the so-called death block.

Death block in the death camp! Doesn't this sound like an absurd paradox, like an inappropriate and blasphemous play on words? Is there anything in the world more complete and final than death?

But death can be fast and slow, easy and painful, inevitable or only possible, sudden or exhausting a person with an unbearably long wait for it. If all the prisoners of the Mauthausen camp knew that for them death was always possible and to one degree or another probable, then those who ended up in the death block had no doubt that their death was inevitable and that it would be especially painful, full of suffering and would come to them, accompanied by endless exhaustion and sophisticated humiliation of the heat and the human soul. It was not for nothing that the SS men mockingly told the condemned prisoners that there was only one way out of this block - through the crematorium pipe.

The death block arose in the last year of Mauthausen's existence. In the first half of 1944, hundreds of prisoners worked for several months to build a granite wall that fenced off the far corner of the camp grounds. This wall was three and a half meters high and a meter thick. On the crest it was strengthened with iron brackets, sharply bent inwards, and on them, using insulators, barbed wire was hung in several rows, which was always under electric shock high voltage. In the corners above the wall, three wooden towers rose, where there were twin machine guns on turrets, aimed at the center of the yard, and strong searchlights, which flooded the yard with the onset of darkness. bright light. The machine guns were always on alert, and SS men were constantly on duty around them.

In the cramped rectangle fenced off by this wall, there was only one camp barrack with serial number 20. Therefore, the death block was also called block number 20, or “isolated block”. And in fact, he was reliably isolated from the entire surrounding world and even from the camp. From the very moment the death block “came into operation” - from the summer of 1944 - people who disappeared behind its double iron doors no longer emerged alive. Prisoners of the general camp sometimes watched from afar as the SS men drove through these doors with sticks, either large parties of prisoners of several hundred people, or very small groups, or even single death row prisoners, but they never saw anyone being taken out of these doors. Only every day a car or cart loaded with corpses drove out of the gates of the death block and dumped them at the crematorium. It sometimes happened that up to three hundred dead bodies were taken out of there in a day. And the appearance of these dead people was such that it frightened even the accustomed prisoners from the team servicing the crematorium ovens. Skeletons, tightly wrapped thin film skin covered with terrible ulcers, sores, bruises from beatings and even gunshot wounds, they seemed like long-dried mummies: one could assume that those who still remained there in the block were almost no different from these terrible dead, but they were still moving, live, suffer and, as it turned out later, even fight.

Who was kept in the death block and what happened there - all this remained unknown; none of the other Mauthausen prisoners had access there. Even tanks of camp soup - gruel - were left by prisoners from the team working in the kitchen at the doors of the death block, and the SS men themselves carried them inside. Judging by the quantity of this soup, in the first period of the existence of the death block, in the summer of 1944, several thousand prisoners were kept there, but their number decreased every month, and after the new year of 1945, less than a thousand people were supplied with soup there. There were rumors among the camp prisoners, apparently leaked through the guard soldiers, that the death block contained mainly Soviet officers and political workers and that a regime had been created for them there that made all the usual horrors of Mauthausen pale.

However, even without this it was clear that in the “isolated block” things were happening that surpassed everything that one could imagine. The prisoners held in the barracks adjacent to the death block heard every day the wild, inhuman screams of tortured people coming from behind this 3.5-meter wall, screams that made even them, the long-suffering prisoners of Mauthausen, shudder.

And sometimes groups of SS men from other extermination camps came here to Mauthausen for instructions. Local “Führers” took them around the blocks, kindly showed them the crematorium, torture chambers, and all the satanic equipment of Mauthausen. In conclusion, they were led to one of the towers of the death block, and they stood there for a long time, watching what was happening inside, and from behind the wall at that time especially terrible, heartbreaking screams were heard. These were unprecedented advanced training courses for murderers and sadists - visiting executioners learned from the executioners of the death block how to “treat” prisoners of war.

The prisoners of the general camp themselves tried not to even look towards the death block and not listen to the screams that were heard from there. They knew that curiosity could cost them dearly - everyone remembered the story that happened with the “Fox”.

There was a seventeen-year-old boy in the camp, almost a boy, Vanya Serdyuk, who was taken by the Nazis from Ukraine and then ended up in Mauthausen for some offenses. Unusually agile, nimble, nimble, with a thin, sharp face, similar to the muzzle of a fox, he was everyone’s favorite in the camp. But to his misfortune, he was distinguished by excessive curiosity. An insatiable boyish curiosity, which even the Mauthausen regime could not exterminate in him, drew him to the wall of the death block. Vanya heard that his compatriots were being held there, behind this wall, and he decided to establish contact with them. Having obtained scraps of paper somewhere, he wrote several notes and tied them to the stones. Seizing convenient moments when there were no guards nearby and the machine gunner on the tower turned away, “Fox” deftly threw pebbles with notes over the wall. Once or twice this went unnoticed, but one day the camp commandant himself caught Vanya Serdyuk doing this. “Little Fox” was detained, and the note he had thrown over the wall was found and delivered to the commandant. When the commandant asked why he threw the notes, “Lisichka” replied that he wanted to find out what was happening in the death block. Then the SS man grinned.

Oh, did you want to know what's going on there? - he asked. - Okay, I'll give you this opportunity. You will go to the death block.

And "Little Fox" disappeared behind heavy “isolated block” doors.

The year 1945 arrived. The Soviet Army gained a foothold on the Vistula line in Poland, and in Hungary, on the banks of the Danube, a major battle for Budapest was unfolding. In the west, Anglo-American troops stood at Germany's door. It was clear that the prisoners of the death block were unlikely to live to see liberation: in six months of 1944, several thousand people were killed there, behind the wall, and the rest, of course, would have been exterminated in the next two or three months.

And suddenly the unexpected happened.

On the night from the second to the third of February 1945, the entire camp was awakened by a sudden outbreak of machine gun fire. Shooting came from the corner of Mauthausen territory where the death block was located. The machine guns on the towers of this block vied with each other and fired in long, choking bursts. Through the crackle of shots, some noise and shouts were heard from there, and the Russians who were in the nearby barracks clearly heard their native “hurray” thundering there and exclamations were heard: “Forward, for the Motherland!”

The whole of Mauthausen was alarmed. The camp syrups roared the alarm, and machine guns from neighboring towers also began firing towards the death block. The guards ran in, the prisoners in the barracks were forced to lie on the floor and they were told that anyone who came to the window would be shot without warning. The barracks were locked from the outside with heavy iron bolts. Then suddenly the lights went out in the entire camp.

But the shooting lasted only about ten to fifteen minutes. Then the shots and screams moved outside the camp, and little by little everything died down. Most of the prisoners did not sleep all night, lost in conjecture.

In the morning, the prisoners were not allowed out of the barracks for a long time and were sent to work later than usual. It became known from the guards that that night the prisoners of the death block rebelled and made a mass escape. But the SS men arrogantly said that not a single one of those who fled would escape, everyone would be caught and executed: a large number of troops and SS units were pulled into the Mauthausen area and the most thorough combing of the area was underway.

All that day, the prisoners who remained in the camp territory watched as the executed fugitives were taken to the crematorium. Trucks arrived, loaded to the brim with corpses, drove small groups of those caught and immediately shot them near the ovens. In a frenzied rage, the SS men tied the captured suicide bombers by the legs to cars or horses and dragged their heads along the cobblestone road leading to the camp crematorium. The corpses were stacked in even piles, and a few days later the SS men announced throughout the camp that “the score was settled” - according to them, all those who escaped from the death block were caught and executed.

This announcement, these piles of mutilated, terrible dead near the crematorium, according to the commandant’s plan, were supposed to instill horror in all prisoners of the camp and forever wean them from thinking about an uprising or escape. But the commandant was wrong in his calculations - most of the prisoners perceived the escape of the condemned men as an example of true valor, as a call for them to rise up against their executioners.

The feat of the suicide bombers sounded like an alarm bell, and the International Underground Committee even more energetically began to develop plans for a future uprising and prepare people for armed struggle, waiting for the right moment. The victorious uprising, which occurred three months later - on May 5, 1945, was a direct continuation and completion of the heroic struggle of the prisoners of the death block.

The terrible Mauthausen then ceased to exist, and the former prisoners returned to their countries, liberated from the rule of fascism. But it seemed that he would forever remain legendary, devoid of any real details feat of the Soviet people in the death block. There was no one to tell about these details: “the score was settled,” as the SS men said, and it was assumed that none of the participants in the tragic escape remained alive. But those who were in Mauthausen retained the memory of this event for the rest of their lives.

Suicide bombers

In 1958, several former Mauthausen prisoners sent me letters reporting an uprising in the death block. They recalled their personal impressions of this event and passed on rumors that later circulated in the camp. By the way, according to them, in Mauthausen after the liberation in May 1945, they said that several people from the escape participants survived. At the same time, I included a story about the death block in one of my radio speeches and asked everyone who knew anything about this feat to respond.

Soon I received a letter from the city of Novocherkassk from the foreman of the machine tool plant, Viktor Nikolaevich Ukraintsev. He turned out to be one of the former prisoners of the death block, a direct participant in the uprising, he was lucky enough to survive the escape and subsequently return to his homeland. A former armor-piercing lieutenant, he experienced a lot of hard things during the war. Having been captured during the encirclement of our troops near Kharkov, he went through several camps, repeatedly tried to escape from captivity, was convicted of acts of sabotage at German enterprises, and in the end he, as an “incorrigible”, was sentenced to death and sent to the twentieth Mauthausen block. During the escape, he escaped not alone, but together with a friend, who, by the way, also almost immediately responded to my radio speech. This was Ivan Vasilyevich Bityukov, design engineer of the car repair plant at Popasnaya station. The captain of our aviation, attack pilot Ivan Bityukov, in 1943, during the battles in the Kuban, committed an air ram and was forced to land on territory occupied by the enemy. For several days he, along with his gunner-radio operator, hid in the Kuban flood plains, trying to make their way east to the front line, but then he was wounded and captured. He, too, went through a whole Chain of camps, made a successful escape, fought in the ranks partisan detachment in Czechoslovakia and there again fell into the hands of the Nazis. This time he was sent to the Mauthausen “isolation block” with a death sentence.

So, the SS men lied - the score did not “settle.” Two participants in the escape survived. But there could be more of them - they had to search for other surviving heroes of the death block.

The history of the suicide uprising in Mauthausen has interested many. Our famous writer Yuri Korolkov was engaged in it for some time, an article about this by an employee of the Soviet Committee of War Veterans Boris Sakharov appeared, Novocherkassk journalist Ariadna Yurkova was looking for heroes and finding out the circumstances of the uprising in the death block. We now know the seven surviving participants in the escape, and with their help we were able to establish the names of several leaders and organizers of this extraordinary uprising.

Captain pilot Vladimir Shepetya spent six months in the death block, surviving the deaths of many of his friends there. Now he is an employee of a construction trust in the city of Poltava. Lieutenant Alexander Mikheenkov, now a collective farmer from Roslavl district, Smolensk region. Lieutenants Ivan Baklanov, now a resident of the city of Shumikha, escaped together after escaping. Kurgan region, and Vladimir Sosedko - a collective farmer from the Kalininsky district, Krasnodar region. Young Ivan Serdyuk, the same “Lisichka” who ended up in the death block for his curiosity, was also lucky to survive. Now he works as an electrician at one of the mines in Donbass.

With the help of these people, the picture of the events that took place in the mysterious Mauthausen death block is revealed to us more and more fully. And this picture is so tragic and at the same time imbued with such high heroism that the uprising and escape of the Mauthausen suicide bombers now appears before us as one of the greatest feats of the Soviet people during the years of their struggle against fascism.

What happened behind the wall of the mysterious death block, what kind of people were there, how was their daring plan born, how were they able to carry it out?

The Nazis sent to block number 20 those whom they considered “incorrigible” and especially dangerous people. Prisoners who made repeated escapes from camps, caught in anti-Hitler agitation, and in acts of sabotage at German plants and factories were sent there. Almost exclusively these were Soviet people, mainly officers, political workers, partisan commanders and commissioners. Among the prisoners were many of our pilots, including several senior officers, who later became the main organizers and inspirers of the uprising and escape. Now we can name only a few, the rest remain unknown.

Hero Soviet Union Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Ivanovich Vlasov held the position of flight inspector in our fighter aviation. He was a magnificent, fearless and dashing pilot, a young man full of energy and vitality, with the appearance of a real Russian hero - tall, broad-shouldered, fair-haired and blue-eyed. When he was captured, the Nazis placed him in the Würzburg fortress along with our generals and, to his surprise, treated the pilot with extreme consideration. Vlasov was even allowed to leave his orders, and he walked around the camp with a Gold Star on his chest. This courtesy, however, was explained very simply: the Gestapo hoped to “process” this officer and recruit him to serve in the so-called “Russian liberation army” of the traitor General Vlasov. But they soon became convinced that nothing would come of it. Nikolai Vlasov indignantly rejected all attempts to persuade him to betray his Motherland and did not give up persistent attempts to escape from captivity. In the end, seeing that neither persuasion, nor promises, nor threats helped, the Nazis decided to destroy this man. He was given a death sentence and sent to the twentieth block of Mauthausen. But even before this, Vlasov managed to convey his Gold Star one of her comrades could handle it, and after her release he managed to deliver her to her homeland.

Already middle-aged Colonel Alexander Filippovich Isupov commanded an assault aviation division at the front. He was shot down near Odessa in March 1944. The Nazis tried to “process” him, like Nikolai Vlasov, but they were met with the same noble inflexibility of a communist and a Soviet citizen. Once in the Litzmanstadt camp, where Isupov was kept, captured Soviet officers were herded to a so-called rally. A traitor appeared before them - an agitator from the Vlasov army, who for a long time and persistently proved the inevitability of Germany's victory in this war. Then the Germans invited our officers to speak out and were the first to turn to Alexander Isupov. To everyone's surprise, the colonel did not refuse.

“I cannot agree with the gentleman who spoke now,” he said, and his voice contained disgust and contempt for the traitor to the Motherland.

And he, with inexorable logic, operating with numerous striking examples, one after another, smashed the arguments of the Vlasovites, proving that victory was already close and that Hitler's Germany will inevitably fail.

The Nazis promise us “freedom,” he said sarcastically, “look what freedom it is.” Are we not witnesses to what the Nazis did to Poland, how they dealt with the population of our occupied regions, how they took away wealth from the outskirts of Leningrad and from other cities? Robbery and slavery - this is the “freedom” that Hitler brings to us.

His comrades listened with extraordinary excitement, and he openly, right in the face of the Nazis and Vlasov, spoke about his hatred of fascism and called on his comrades not to give up the fight even here in captivity. The meeting was irreparably spoiled, the Vlasovite had to retreat, and the Germans, although they pretended that they were indifferent to the speech of the Soviet colonel, did not forgive him for this speech. The fate of Alexander Isupov was decided. A few days later he was handcuffed and taken away somewhere in a closed car. His comrades were sure that he had been shot, and only now, in recent years, is it becoming clear that Isupov was doomed by the Nazis to a slow and painful death in the Mauthausen death block.

Fate led in other ways to the twentieth block former commander aviation division of Colonel Kirill Chubchenkov, squadron commander Captain Gennady Mordovtsev and others, but from the moment the double doors of the death block closed behind them, they entered one common road leading to death.

Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Vlasov

Scary workshop of the destruction factory

As you know, in Hitler’s camps the organization of accounting was carried out with all German pedantry. Each prisoner was accompanied from camp to camp by a special card with all the information about him, with fingerprints, with a photograph taken from the front and in profile, with all the notes about escapes and fines. But special notes were made on the card of everyone who was intended for the death block. Either it was crossed out diagonally with a red stripe, or in a neat clerk's handwriting it was written on it: “Fernichten” - to destroy, then the words “darkness and fog” or “return is undesirable” were written on it, or else simply put one letter “K” - from German word"kugel" - bullet. All these marks and words meant the same thing - death, the most terrible and painful.

This torment began as soon as the suicide bomber entered the gates of the general Mauthausen camp. He was immediately isolated from the rest of the prisoners and placed in one of the cells of the so-called politabtailung. There, in the torture rooms, he underwent initial treatment - the SS men beat him half to death, stabbed him with needles, and tortured him with electric shock. Then he was driven into the “bathhouse,” which was also a refined and unbearable torture. In a small concrete room, streams of icy water, as tight as whips, gushed from everywhere. The choking, suffocating prisoner could not hide anywhere from these water scourges, and the mocking “bathing” sometimes lasted for several hours. After that, the camp barber cut a wide path from the forehead to the back of the head with a clipper, and the naked man was thrown straight into the snow, throwing old striped pants and a jacket made of some kind of sackcloth after him. These clothes were treated in advance in order to infect the prisoner with scabies, eczema or other skin diseases. With blows of their batons, the SS men drove the suicide bomber at a run to the iron doors of the block, forcing him to get dressed as he went. The doors opened, the man was pushed in, and there, inside, he was grabbed by two SS men who were already waiting for their victim, and another, even more brutal, beating began. So, having passed through this “purgatory”, a person found himself in hell itself - in a long barracks standing in the center of a narrow courtyard, fenced with a wall. This barracks was divided into three parts: two rooms (in German “stube”) where the prisoners spent the night, and one compartment in the middle where the office premises were located.

One of the “shtube” was intended for the sick - those who had only a few days left to live were housed here, people who could no longer walk, but only crawled. But they were also forced into daytime leave the barracks and crawl out into the yard in any weather. The second, larger room, about ten by twelve meters, served as housing for the rest of the prisoners. Five hundred to six hundred people were kept here. The room looked empty, like a barn - there was no furnishings. There were no beds, no bunks, not even straw on the cement floor. The prisoners were not given any bedding, not even blankets, although the premises were not heated in winter. People slept right on the floor, or it would be more accurate to say that they slept on top of each other, because only a small part of the prisoners could fit on this floor area, while the rest had to lie on their comrades or sleep standing up. In the stuffy summer nights The SS men tightly locked the windows of the barracks, and in a relatively small room where such a mass of people were crowded, the air gradually became unbearably heavy and stuffy, people did not have enough oxygen to breathe, and many, unable to bear it, were suffocating by morning. In the winter, in the evenings, before the prisoners were driven into the barracks, the room was watered with hoses so that by nightfall there was always several centimeters of water on the floor. People had to go to bed right in the water, and in the middle of the night SS guards appeared and opened all the windows wide until the morning, arranging a mocking “ventilation.” And every morning the corpses of frozen people remained on the icy floor.

In the middle service room of the barracks there was a so-called washroom. There were concrete washbasins, showers with cold water and a bathtub with a lid. Massive iron hooks were driven into the walls of the washroom above. In fact, this room also served as a place of torture. Here prisoners were put under ice-cold showers for unbearably long hours or forced to sit in a bathtub filled to the brim with ice water, and they drowned it there, covering it with a lid on top. People were hanged on iron hooks or simply had fun by putting a noose around the suicide bomber’s throat and pulling him up until he lost consciousness. These hooks seemed to invite the prisoners to hang themselves. Especially for this purpose, they were left with waist belts, and many of the prisoners, unable to withstand the daily abuse and torment, preferred to hasten their end and hanged themselves there in the washroom.

Across the corridor from the washroom, diagonally, there was a small room where the block leader lived - the block one. He was a hefty German with powerful hands and the stupid face of an animal - a criminal who was sentenced to death for repeated murders, but was promised pardon if he earned it by cruel treatment of prisoners in the death block, and he cured himself with all zeal. This executioner literally bathed in blood: many hundreds of people died from his rubber baton filled with lead, were strangled by his hands or thrown into the sewer well located in front of the barracks.

In the block room there was a stove and a box of coal - this was the only heated room in the barracks. A large box of ersatz soap was also stored here - stone-hard tiles of some unknown substance. However, none of the prisoners knew how it was washed: ersatz soap was only listed as issued to prisoners, but never fell into their hands. It was also formally believed that blankets were provided for patients in the block - a large pile of these blankets lay in the block room. But they were never given out even to the dying. The block boy was sleeping on a pile of blankets.

Blokov had his own guards - two strong and silent Dutchmen followed him everywhere. It was unknown why these people ended up in the death block: they did not understand anyone, and none of the prisoners knew their native language. They themselves did not kill the prisoners or mock them and only silently and resignedly carried out all the orders of the block.

In addition, the so-called team “Stubedinst” - “premises service” - was created from the prisoners themselves. In Russian, these people were called Stubendists. They performed various works inside the block:

they cleaned the premises, washed the floors, dragged the corpses out into the yard and stacked them, cut ersatz bread, etc. and for all this they sometimes received an extra spoon of camp soup - gruel - or a small addition of the same ersatz bread. There were different people among these Stubendists - some only did the work assigned to them, while others tried in every possible way to curry favor with the SS men and the block. Among these latter, three stood out especially, who became the bloc’s immediate assistants, murderers just like himself. Two - Adam and Volodka - were Poles, and the third - “Tatar Bear” - was a resident of Crimea. His real name and surname are Mikhail Ikhanov. They say that he was a lieutenant in one of the cavalry units Red Army, and then was captured or went over to the side of the Nazis and began to serve in German troops. Once, while escorting a railway train, he committed theft, and for this he was sent to one of the blocks of the general Mauthausen camp. Here he began to zealously help the SS men destroy prisoners and was distinguished by such cruelty that the camp commandant decided to “promote” him and transferred him to the death block, where “Mishka the Tatar” became the right hand of the block, with pleasure tortured and killed his former fellow citizens and comrades by conclusion.

Among all the death factories and their branches, created in such abundance by the Nazis in different countries Europe, the death block of the Mauthausen camp was completely special phenomenon. It most vividly and fully embodied the senseless inhuman cruelty that underlay the philosophy of German fascism. The people who were sent here were supposed to die, but they were not killed immediately, but with a sophisticated, sadistic gradualism. At the same time, they were not sent to any work, they never left the yard of the twentieth block and, therefore, did not bring any benefit to Hitler’s Reich. Moreover, no matter how meager, no matter how similar to cattle feed the food that was given to the prisoners was, the Nazis were still forced to spend a certain amount of food on them: rutabaga for gruel, ersatz bread, etc. But it is known that that the German fascists were distinguished by masterly frugality, did not waste anything and used even the people they killed for housekeeping: they made soap from the dead and stuffed mattresses with the hair of their victims. How can we explain that they were so “wasteful” in the death block and spent food on people destined for destruction?

There is only one explanation for this: the death block was also a “training ground” where SS executioners were trained, where they were aroused in the desire to kill, experience a thirst for blood and enjoy human suffering. The prisoners of the twentieth block became the raw material, the material on which Himmler, Kaltenbrunner and other SS leaders raised those who were the support of the Hitler regime - “übermensch” - “supermans” who asserted “domination on earth by the only right - the right of force, who killed people to the right and to the left, now with indifference, now with sadistic pleasure and receiving special, supreme satisfaction from human suffering. The death block had no other reason for existence; the entire regime established here served this purpose.

With the first glimpses of dawn, the command “rise” was heard in the barracks, and the dense mass of human bodies, lying in several layers on top of each other, began to move at once. The prisoners hastily jumped to their feet and ran to the washroom, and only those who died during the night remained on the floor.

The morning “toilet” was the first mockery. Each of the prisoners only had time to run to the washbasin, splash a handful of water on his face and then wipe himself with his sleeve or the bottom of his jacket. A prisoner who did not do this would face severe beatings. But those who lingered in the washroom even for a second were beaten even more brutally by the block officer and his three assistants.

Having “washed themselves,” the prisoners ran into the courtyard and lined up in hundreds in a close six-meter gap between the wall and the house, near the right corner of the barracks. In front of them, blocking the sky, rose a granite wall and rows of electrified barbed wire stretched on curved brackets. From two wooden towers in the corners, aimed directly at this formation, the muzzles of twin machine guns were black, and the eyes of the SS men looked warily from under their iron helmets. Chilled by the frosty wind in thin clothes, barefoot, with feet blackened from the cold, the prisoners, standing in formation, danced in the snow or on icy cobblestones. Living skeletons, with sharp, extremely emaciated faces, with bodies covered with scabs, ulcers, bruises, unhealed wounds, these people knew that a new day of torment was beginning for them, which would bring them one step closer to death, and for many it would be the last day of their life. Trampling, moving all the time in order to retain the last calories of life's warmth, they at the same time vigilantly looked around, trying not to miss the appearance of the SS men. And at this time, the Stubendists dragged the corpses into the yard and dragged them to the opposite corner of the barracks under the tower, stacking them there in a neat pile “for ease of counting.” And the prisoners themselves tensely counted these corpses. They knew: if there were less than ten dead, this meant that the “norm” had not been met and the SS men would be more rampant today than usual. But, as a rule, this “norm” was exceeded, and every day either a handcart filled to the brim with corpses or a truck filled with the dead drove out of the gates of the death block to the crematorium.

About an hour passed in anticipation. Then, from the doors leading to the general camp, the blockführer appeared - a twenty-five-year-old sadistic SS man, accompanied by a whole retinue of assistant executioners. The prisoners stood motionless in formation with their heads bowed low; they were not allowed to raise their eyes to the fascist authorities. Sometimes, instead, the command “get down!” was heard, and at the same time, from one of the machine-gun towers, a tight stream of icy water from a fire hose fell on the line of prisoners, knocking to the ground those who did not have time to fall. People fell face down on top of each other, and the SS men slowly walked past this prone formation, raining blows with their batons, and sometimes shooting people at random. Then the command “stand up!” was given. - and people jumped to their feet, and those who could no longer rise were dragged to the pile of corpses.

After this, the mocking “charging” began, as the SS men called it. Prisoners were forced to crawl through mud or snow, run, and squat at goose-steps, sometimes for three or four kilometers around the barracks. Anyone who could not stand it and fell down was beaten half to death or shot. The pile of corpses was continuously replenished until the SS men got tired and went to rest. And then the prisoners began their favorite pastime - playing “stove”.

One of the prisoners ran to the side and commanded “Come to me!” And immediately people rushed towards him from everywhere, huddling in a dense crowd, pressing closely against each other in order to warm their comrade with the pitiful warmth of their exhausted bodies. This went on for several minutes, and then one of those who were outside ran away in turn and shouted in the same way: “Come to me!” The old “stove” crumbled and a new one emerged. Thus, people who had remained outside last time and did not have time to get their share of warmth now found themselves in the center of the crowd and could warm themselves with the bodies of their comrades. This game was a struggle for the life cooling in the body. And then the same SS men appeared, and the “charging” began again.

The whole day passed in this alternation of painful “exercises,” accompanied by beatings and murders and playing “stove.” Only late in the evening were prisoners allowed to enter the barracks.

Death row prisoners were not fed every day. Only once every two or three days was gruel delivered to the block. As a rule, it was cooked from rotten, unpeeled rutabaga to cause stomach problems in prisoners. In the summer, during the hot July and August days of 1944, the SS men came up with another torment. The gruel that was delivered to the death block was salted so that the salt could no longer dissolve in this liquid soup. And when the prisoners ate their portion, the water supply in the block was shut off. Being exposed to the scorching sun all day, the death row prisoners experienced unbearable torment, their mouths became dry, their tongues became swollen, and many went crazy, unable to withstand this torture of thirst.

The distribution of gruel itself was usually also accompanied by beatings and bullying. After the block guard poured each of the prisoners a little of this cloudy soup into a tin can and the people, standing in line, greedily ate their portion, everyone was looking forward to a possible addition. Blokov would deliberately point vaguely at some part of the formation, and from there a dozen or so prisoners would immediately rush towards him, holding out their tin cans, pushing and pushing one another. This is what the bloc needed. He hit one with force on the head with a ladle, another received several blows with a heavy club, he kicked a third in the stomach, and the fourth actually splashed a little soup. And the blockführer and his retinue usually watched the “performance” from one of the machine-gun towers, amusing themselves a lot at this spectacle.

Every day at least ten corpses were taken from the death block to the camp crematorium. But the SS men were not satisfied with those who died overnight, or those whom they killed during daily “charges.” From time to time they destroyed prisoners of this block in whole parties. Often, specialists of some professions were called out of the ranks - tailors, plasterers, mechanics - under the pretext of sending them to work, and as soon as the gullible came out, they were surrounded by a convoy and led straight to the crematorium and there they were shot and burned. This is exactly how Viktor Ukraintsev’s comrade, who ended up in the camp at the same time as him, died, Muscovite Lieutenant Konstantin Rumyantsev, whom the old-timers of the block did not have time to warn about this trick of the SS men - he went out along with several others when the shoemakers were called out of the line, and on the same day he was destroyed near the crematorium. And sometimes the SS men simply burst into the barracks in the middle of the night, called the numbers of about two or three prisoners and took them away to execution. He killed several people every day and block. He marked prisoners who did not please him in some way, wrote down their numbers, and this meant that in the next two or three days he would lie in wait for a person and either kill him outright with a blow of his club, or throw him into a sewer well, from where the Stubendists would extract him the next morning corpse with hooks. To these victims were added more people who were killed daily by the bloc’s assistants - Stubendists Adam, Volodka and “Mishka the Tatar”.

The death block - this human slaughterhouse - was the most “highly productive” workshop of the Mauthausen death factory. During the second half of 1944, more than 6 thousand people were apparently killed here. By the new year, 1945, only about 800 prisoners remained in the twentieth block. With the exception of five or six Yugoslavs and several Poles - participants in the Warsaw Uprising, who were recently brought to the block, all prisoners were Soviet people, mainly officers. Although each of them outwardly only vaguely resembled a person, they all remained Russian Soviet people in character and not only lived, not only heroically endured all the suffering that befell them, but also dreamed of the struggle, of the day that would come , when they settle scores with their executioners. Some of them, probably the strongest, had already spent several months in the death block, and the thought of giving battle to their enemies never left them.

The prisoners are getting ready

We don’t know who and when first came up with the idea of a mass escape. It is known that the main organizers and leaders of the preparation for the uprising were Nikolai Vlasov, Alexander Isupov, Kirill Chubchenkov and other commanders, whose names, unfortunately, were not preserved in the memory of those who survived. They say that this underground headquarters discussed all the details of the future uprising during the “stoves,” when they managed to exchange a few phrases unnoticed by the block commander and his assistants, who were vigilantly watching the prisoners. It was only necessary to arrange in advance so that the most reliable people who could be trusted gathered around you: after all, the possibility of provocation on the part of one of the prisoners was not excluded.

It is not known how, but this headquarters managed to establish contact with the International Underground Committee of the general camp. Apparently, it was sometimes possible to throw a note over the wall or send it to someone from the east and west, and it was clear that as soon as there was an immediate danger of the liberation of Mauthausen, the SS might try to destroy all the prisoners held in the camp, but of course, first of all - the suicide bombers of the twentieth block. Probably, Vlasov, Isupov and their comrades in the underground headquarters understood that, having decided on an uprising, they should carry it out as soon as possible.

When Ivan Bityukov ended up in the death block, he saw here many pilots with whom fate brought him together in other Nazi camps, where he had visited before, and even met one of his friends and former colleague - Captain Gennady Mordovtsev. He conveyed to Mordovtsev everything that the Czech hairdresser had said, and he reported this news to the leaders of the underground headquarters and undertook to obtain the plan himself. From then on, every time, during the distribution of gruel, as soon as the bloc offered a supplement, Mordovtsev was among the first to rush to him, deliberately creating a dump, trying to get hit and fall to the ground. Lying down, he quickly and quietly searched the bottoms of the tanks. He did this twice, but without success, and only on the third time did he manage to feel some kind of ball stuck to the bottom of the tank. He peeled it off and quickly put it in his mouth. But although the blocker did not see this, he still took note of the prisoner who was so persistently trying to get more. His comrades saw him write down Gennady Mordovtsev’s number when he turned and ran towards the line. This meant that the pilot would be destroyed in the coming days.

When the prisoners were driven into the barracks in the evening, Gennady Mordovtsev gave this ball to Vlasov and Isupov. Inside it was a small piece of tissue paper with a map of the camp's surroundings. But that same evening, when Mordovtsev was near the sewer well, the block worker, sneaking up on him unnoticed, threw him down there with one blow. Thus died this brave pilot, who, at the cost of his life, had given his comrades the opportunity to carry out their daring undertaking.

It seemed how these people, exhausted, exhausted, half-dead, unarmed and defenseless before the power of their executioners, could even think about an uprising! How could they dream of storming this three-meter granite wall, the crest of which was protected by high-voltage barbed wire? What could they oppose to the twin machine guns, always pointed at them from the towers? How will they fight with the heavily armed SS camp guards, who will be raised to their feet at the first shots? Truly, it should have seemed to any sane person that this undertaking was fundamentally doomed to failure.

Three important human qualities could ensure success of the desperately daring plan of the prisoners of the death block - ingenuity, organization and courage. And now, when the history of the uprising becomes known to us, we can say that these people showed miracles of ingenuity, showed iron-clad organization and boundless courage.

Surprisingly, they found a weapon, or rather, something that could replace it. The headquarters decided to arm the prisoners with cobblestones torn from the pavement of the yard, pieces of coal that lay in the block room, pieces of ersatz soap stored there, wooden blocks from their feet and fragments of cement washbasins: they were supposed to break them before escaping. The rain of these stones and debris was supposed to fall on the machine gun towers. But the most important weapon that was at the disposal of the suicide bombers were two fire extinguishers hanging in the living quarters of the barracks. Three people were assigned to each of the fire extinguishers, the strongest, or rather, the least exhausted. They had to run to the base of the tower, activate the fire extinguisher and direct a stream of foam into the face of the SS machine gunners to prevent them from firing and allow the assault group to climb onto the tower and take possession of the machine gun. And in order to approach the machine gunners unnoticed, it was decided on the evening of the uprising to start digging a tunnel from the barracks to the base of the tower.

They hoped to overcome the electrified barbed wire with the help of blankets located in the block room. They had to throw these blankets over the wire and then try to close it at least with the weight of their own bodies.

The bloc itself had to be destroyed. They decided not to kill his Dutch bodyguards, but only to tie them up and gag them. Prisoners - Yugoslavs and Poles, when they were told about the impending uprising, answered in one voice: “We are with you, Russian brothers!” The situation with the Stubendists was more complicated. Among them were all sorts of people, and they could turn out to be a serious obstacle, especially since preparations for the uprising in last night should have been carried out openly before their eyes.

But the Stubendists were the same suicide bombers as the rest, and they understood that the Nazis would destroy them along with everyone else, or at best, last. The uprising gave them the only opportunity to save their lives. The underground headquarters decided to openly talk to them and invite them to participate in the escape.

The pilot, Major Leonov, was assigned to conduct this sensitive conversation. He was appointed senior of the hundred in which the Stubendists were lined up during inspections, and was formally considered as their boss, although he was the same prisoner as the others, but he never allowed himself any actions directed against his comrades in misfortune. Seizing the moment, he had this conversation, and “Tatar Bear,” Adam, Volodka and other Stubendists agreed to participate in the escape and even took upon themselves the destruction of the block. They really had no other choice.

The uprising was scheduled for the night of January 28-29. In order to determine the most convenient hour, night surveillance of the towers was established through cracks in the walls of the barracks. It turned out that the sentries at the machine guns changed at exactly midnight. It was decided to start the uprising at one in the morning: by this time the SS men who had been replaced would have already fallen asleep, those who would remain on the towers would have time to get a little tired and cold and their vigilance would be dulled, and the next shift, which should start at two in the morning, would still be sleeping in the barracks .

The uprising was prepared not only organizationally. During these days, moral preparation, very unique and unusual, also took place; a kind of political work was carried out, internal mobilization of people before their last, mortal battle.

There was a Soviet journalist among the prisoners in the death block. None of the surviving suicide bombers remember his last name; as they say, all his comrades called him by his first name - Volodya. Short, black-haired, wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, he was perhaps the most educated person here on the block. They say that before the war he lived in Leningrad and graduated from the history department of the university there. But Volodya worked for a newspaper published in the merchant navy. Before the war, he set sail on one of our ships and ended up in a German port. Together with the entire crew, the journalist was interned, imprisoned in some fortress, from where he escaped, and for escaping he was sentenced to death and sent here to the twentieth block. It was he who became a kind of commissar of the uprising, preparing people for it in advance.

Before the New Year, choosing a moment when Blokov was in a complacent mood, Volodya persuaded him to allow him to tell his comrades in the evenings the contents of books he had once read. Since then, every evening in the crowded barracks his calm, quiet voice could be heard for hours. Volodya remembered many books almost by heart and was a great storyteller. Apparently, not without intention, he always chose books with heroic content, which were about exploits, about how people overcame seemingly insurmountable difficulties. He retold Dumas and Jack London, "The Gadfly" and "How the Steel Was Tempered." The surviving participants in the uprising especially remembered one story that Volodya told several evenings in a row. It was the story of a group of Russian sailors who were captured by Germans, imprisoned in some fortress and made a successful escape from there. And although Volodya, out of caution, pretended that he had read about it, everyone who listened to him understood that he was talking about the events of the Great Patriotic War and that either the saga journalist experienced these events or learned about them from someone. They listened to this story with captivating attention: it “was a direct parallel to the events that were being prepared in the death block, and its successful outcome inspired the prisoners with hope for the success of their desperate plan. In the last evenings before the escape, they also skillfully pretended that they were talking about a book they had read , Volodya, on behalf of the headquarters, told the prisoners in detail how their uprising would take place and what each of them should do. This was an instruction cleverly presented in the form of a literary work.

Everything was ready, when suddenly a truly fatal event occurred. It is still unknown whether it was the result of betrayal or just a tragic coincidence. On the night of January 25 or 26, two or three days before the uprising, the SS men unexpectedly descended on the barracks. The eldest of them loudly shouted 25 numbers, and 25 prisoners, one after another, left the barracks, going out into the courtyard. Among those summoned were the main leaders of the uprising: Nikolai Vlasov, Alexander Isupov, Kirill Chubchenkov and others. They were taken away, and the next day it became known that they had been destroyed in the crematorium.

This was a hard blow for everyone. It seemed that the uprising was now paralyzed. But this did not happen. Other people, whose names we do not know, took the place of the dead and became the leaders of the prepared escape. They say that one of them was Major Leonov. Preparations continued as usual, but the uprising had to be postponed for several days. It was now scheduled for the night of February 2-3.

And now it has finally come, this long-awaited night. In the evening, as soon as the prisoners were driven into the barracks and the SS guards left, the blockhouse was destroyed. The Stubendists called him into the corridor under some pretext, one of the prisoners threw a blanket, previously stolen from his room, over his head, and “Tatar Bear” stabbed his boss with a knife. They tied up both Dutchmen, and they lay on the floor with gags in their mouths, waiting for the decision of their fate, the same as always, phlegmatic and indifferent to everything. The commanders formed four assault groups: three to capture machine-gun towers and one to repel an SS attack from the general camp. People armed themselves with stones, pieces of coal, stocks, grabbed ersatz soap, and broke cement washbasins. A special team began to dig a tunnel in the corner of the barracks towards the machine-gun tower. However, this work had to be stopped soon: the soil turned out to be very hard and rocky, and it became clear that without tools it would be simply impossible to dig an underground passage before one in the morning. We decided to storm the machine-gun towers openly, jumping out of the windows of the barracks.

About a hundred prisoners could not take part in the escape: they were no longer able to walk, most of them had two or three days to live. With tears in their eyes, these people saw off their comrades to last Stand, asked to tell their homeland about their death, to convey their farewell greetings to their native land. They knew that they would be immediately destroyed after escaping, but they wanted to be at least somehow useful to their friends at this decisive hour and gave them the last property they had - their stocks and their clothes, leaving them completely naked. Half of these clothes, as well as half of the blankets stored in the block room, were left to be thrown over the barbed wire under current. The other half was allowed to use rags - with them the participants of the uprising wrapped their bare feet: after all, they had to run through the snow.

Midnight came, the machine gunners changed on the towers. While waiting for the appointed hour, people's nerves were tense to the extreme. Everyone thought with fear about one thing: would the SS men now come to the block for the next batch of victims? This would mean a disaster: the Nazis would have time to raise the alarm before the uprising began. Fortunately, this did not happen.

At ten minutes to ten the assault groups took their places at the barracks windows, ready to rush forward at the first signal. A table was brought from the block room, and one of the leaders of the uprising stood up on it - already an elderly colonel or general of the quartermaster service with a white patch of gray on his short-cropped hair. Slowly he looked around at the tense, frowning faces of the prisoners, the dying ones, who lay naked on the floor.

Dear comrades and brothers! - he said excitedly. - I do not have any authority from our command and the Soviet government, but I take the liberty on their behalf to thank all of you for what you endured here, in this hell, while remaining real Soviet people. You have not compromised the honor and dignity of a citizen of the Soviet Union and a soldier of our great army. Now all that remains for you and me is to fulfill the duty of a soldier to the end and fight the enemy in the last, mortal battle. Many of us will die in this battle, maybe almost all of us, but let's hope that some will manage to survive and return to their homeland. Let us now solemnly swear to each other our fate, the lives of our friends tortured here, let us swear that whoever has the good fortune to return home will tell people what happened here in the death block, about the death of our brothers, about our suffering and struggle. Let them do this in the name of the complete destruction of fascism, so that such horrors will never happen again on earth. And let the one who does not do this be damned! We swear, comrades!

And in the barracks this word sounded solemnly, dully and menacingly, repeated by everyone:

We swear!

“Now say goodbye to each other and exchange addresses,” the colonel said and got down from the table.

For several minutes, the only sounds in the room were the muffled sobs of people hugging for the last time and addresses and surnames being hurriedly repeated in a low voice. Then the command “Get ready!” was heard, everything began to move again for a minute, and again there was silence. People stood in place, tense, holding their breath, ready to attack.

Forward! For the Motherland! - the order rang out loudly.

Last stand of suicide bombers

All the windows of the barracks instantly opened wide, and a crowd of prisoners poured into the courtyard, right under the blinding light of the searchlights. A machine gun hurriedly chattered from one of the towers - the SS men noticed the attackers. And immediately a multivocal, furious Russian “Hurray!” thundered over the death block. - the prisoners no longer had anything to hide: their last, decisive battle had begun.

Now all three machine guns were firing at the crowd of attackers. But a rain of stones, pieces of coal, and blocks had already fallen on the towers, the broken searchlights went out, and foam streams from fire extinguishers hit the machine gunners in the faces, preventing them from firing.

Apparently, one of the stones hit the target - the machine gun on the middle tower choked and fell silent. And immediately, lifting each other up, the prisoners climbed onto the platform of the tower assault group. A minute later, this machine gun began to hit other towers, forcing the SS men to cease fire.

And while the battle was going on near the towers, a long line of prisoners, crouching, lined up at the base of the outer wall. Others climbed onto their shoulders and, throwing blankets and jackets over the live wire, hung on it. In some places, people, overcome by a hot impulse, closed the wire with their bodies, and their comrades climbed further along them, forward. Finally, the brackets could not bear the weight and bent. The wire closed, a bright electric discharge flashed, and the lights in the entire camp went out. In the darkness, camp sirens howled alarmingly, screams of SS men and machine gun fire could be heard from behind the wall, and machine guns from all Mauthausen towers fired at random in the direction of the death block.

The yard of the block was strewn with corpses, dead bodies hung on the wire, lay on the crest of the wall, but already hundreds of prisoners, lifting one another, pulling their comrades up, climbed onto this wall and jumped off on the other side of it.

There were new obstacles there - a ditch with icy water, and behind it a high fence of barbed wire. But nothing could stop the suicide bombers, who escaped from hell itself and saw freedom before them. Blankets and jackets were used again, and within minutes there was a wide gap in the wire fence. Pouring out through this gap, hundreds of prisoners already found themselves outside the camp, on a wide snow-covered field and, immediately breaking up into groups, as had been previously agreed, they left in different directions to make it difficult for the SS men to pursue them. And guards with dogs ran out of the gates of the camp, motorcycles rode out, illuminating the field with their headlights, along which the prisoners were running, knee-deep in snow, exhausted.

The largest group was heading towards the forest visible in the distance. But in the light of the moon the pursuit began to overtake her, and the bursts of machine guns could be heard getting closer. Then several dozen people separated from this group and turned back. They sang “The Internationale” and went straight to meet the SS men in order to engage them in the last battle, die and, at the cost of their lives, give their comrades the opportunity to gain a few minutes and reach the saving forest.

Another group, under the command of Colonel Grigory Zabolotnyak, fled towards the Danube. A few kilometers beyond the camp, the prisoners came across a German anti-aircraft battery. They managed to silently remove the sentry. Then they burst into the dugouts where the gun servants were sleeping, strangled the artillerymen with their bare hands, seized their weapons, cannons, and even a truck that was parked right there. By order of Zabolotnyak, the wounded and those who were exhausted were loaded onto the car, and the group continued to move further along the river bank. But columns of motorized infantry, called by alarm from Linz, were already approaching, and this entire group died in an unequal battle. Only one person remained alive - young Ivan Serdyuk, the same “Lisichka” who ended up in the death block because of his curiosity. The seriously wounded group commander, Colonel Grigory Zabolotnyak, died in his arms, who managed to tell Serdyuk before his death that his family lived in the Siberian city of Kansk.

During the night, the prisoners who escaped from the camp fled to the outskirts of Mauthausen. But, unfortunately, there are few forests in this area and villages and hamlets are scattered throughout quite densely. The fugitives hid in barns and attics of houses, in barnyards and in stacks of straw standing in yards or fields. However, almost all of these shelters turned out to be unreliable - the Nazis took the most energetic measures to catch those who fled.

SS men with dogs were sent to search. Troops were called from Linz and other nearby cities, and thick lines of soldiers combed the area in the morning, inspecting every hole or bush, searching every house and barn, piercing every stack of straw with sharp iron rods. The local police were raised to their feet, classes stopped in schools, and the radio of Vienna and Linz constantly broadcast appeals to the population, which said that a large group of dangerous bandits had fled from the Mauthausen concentration camp and that a reward would be given for everyone caught, and any attempt to hide escaping and providing assistance to him is punishable by death.

The suicide bombers were caught one by one. Some were killed on the spot or tied with their feet to a car and dragged to the camp crematorium, others were collected in groups and taken to the camp, shot near the crematorium. Still others - and these, they say, were the majority - were not allowed to live by their executioners and, in a last desperate impulse, rushed at them with their bare hands.

Much later, on May 5, 1945, when the rebel prisoners of Mauthausen took possession of the camp, among the guards they captured was one SS man who had participated in the February raids on escaped suicide bombers. He said that when fugitives were discovered, they usually did not surrender alive, but rushed to strangle the SS men, sank their teeth into their throats and often managed to kill one of the executioners before dying. According to him, during these raids more than 20 people from the SS guards of the camp were killed. This does not include those killed among local police and troops who participated in the raids. And besides, other losses should be added here. They say that on Himmler's orders, some SS men guarding the death block were shot for allowing the uprising and escape, and the blockführer and the camp commandant received heavy punishments.

These raids continued for more than a week, with every day the piles of corpses near the crematorium grew, and in the end the SS men announced that “the score had been settled.” Now we know that they were lying: some of the prisoners could not be found, they escaped.

How did this happen?

Fulfilling the oath

Viktor Ukraintsev, who was operating one of the fire extinguishers during the assault, escaped behind the wall and behind the wire, and fled with his comrade Ivan Bityukov. For several hours they made their way in the dark, moving further and further from the camp, and finally found themselves on the outskirts of the small Austrian town of Holtzleiten, near the estate of the burgomaster, an ardent Nazi. They made their way into the barn of this estate and there they came across sleeping people who, having woken up, did not raise the alarm, seeing in front of them the terrible, ragged, exhausted fugitives. These people who slept in the barn were farm laborers of the burgomaster - Soviet citizens Vasily Logovatovsky and Leonid Shashero, and with them the Pole Metyk, taken from their homelands to Hitler's hard labor. They immediately realized that prisoners had arrived who had escaped from Mauthausen. First of all, they fed them boiled potatoes prepared for livestock, and then, after consulting, they decided to hide the suicide bombers in the attic of the burgomaster’s house: there was little chance that the SS men would search there.

The farmhands knew that they would be killed if the prisoners were discovered. But they boldly took this risk. And Mr. Holtzleiten’s burgomaster, who took an active part in the capture of the escapees and went out every day on raids, did not at all suspect that when he returned home late at night and went to bed, right above his bed, in the attic, under a heap of clover prepared for the winter, they were hiding two of those whom he had sought so eagerly.

For two weeks, three farm laborers hid Ukraintsev and Bityukov, fed them, stealing food from the burgomaster, cutting down for them their meager portion of food received from the owners. Then, when everything calmed down in the area, they got civilian clothes for the fugitives, and one night, having said goodbye to their saviors, Ukraintsev and Bityukov moved further east.

Soon fate separated them - one day they fell into a German ambush. Ukraintsev was caught, but he, knowing the language, called himself the Pole Jan Grushnitsky, steadfastly endured all the beatings and torture during interrogations and eventually ended up in Mauthausen again, but in a general camp, in the Polish bloc. Here he lived until liberation on May 5, 1945, and only after that he admitted to his comrades that he was one of the escaped escapees from the death block. And Ivan Bityukov walked east alone for a long time and already met the advancing Soviet troops on the soil of Czechoslovakia.

Lieutenants Ivan Baklanov and Vladimir Sosedko also fled together. They were lucky enough to get far from the camp, and they hid in the forests for several months, getting food by night raids into nearby villages. They were so afraid to leave their safe forest shelter that they even missed the end of the war and only on May 10 learned that Nazi Germany had been defeated.

Vladimir Shepetya also managed to hide in the vicinity of the camp for several days and get civilian clothes, but later he was caught by the Nazis and, using a false name, ended up in another camp for Soviet prisoners of war. Alexander Mikheenkov was the only survivor from Colonel Makarov’s group. The rest of the prisoners from this group were caught, and Mikheenkov managed to hide in a cattle barn in the yard of one of the Austrian peasants. He crawled under a stack of old straw and dug himself a deep hole under it. This saved him - both the owner and the SS men who came several times pierced this stack from all sides with iron rods, but could not find the fugitive. For ten days he holed up in this shelter, and then moved east, crossed the Czechoslovak border and until the end of the war hid in the house of the Czech patriot Vaclav Shvets, who sheltered him.

All of them, having returned to their homeland, never forgot about the oath that they took together with their comrades when going into their last battle - to tell people about what was happening in the death block, about the suffering, struggle and death of their comrades. But for a long time, the stories and memories of former prisoners remained only the property of their relatives and friends: as you know, at that time we had an unfair, biased attitude towards people who returned from Hitler’s captivity. Only in recent years, having heard my speech on the radio, having read articles by B. Sakharov and Yu. Korolkov in newspapers, the surviving heroes of the uprising in the death block responded one after another.

For the first time, former comrades in the death block met in 1960 in Novocherkassk. Ivan Bityukov and Vladimir Shepetya, Ivan Baklanov and Vladimir Sosedko came there to see Viktor Ukraintsev. Here not only the meeting of the heroes of the death block took place, but also the first post-war meeting of Ukraintsev and Bityukov with their saviors - former farm laborers of the burgomaster of the town of Goltsleiten - a driver from the city of Klintsy, Bryansk region, Vasily Logovatovsky and master of the Bryansk Machine-Building Plant Leonid Shashero. And two years later, in the fall of 1962, former prisoners of the death block gathered in Moscow. Now they had the opportunity to fulfill the oath given to their comrades - they spoke in front of millions of people on a Moscow television program. Then they were received by the Deputy Minister of Defense USSR Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasily Ivanovich Chuikov. And in the Soviet Committee of War Veterans an exciting meeting took place between the heroes of the legendary uprising and former prisoners general camp Mauthausen. People who had gone through the hell of a terrible death camp now looked with surprise and admiration at those who managed to escape from the very depths of this hell. They listened to the stories of former death row prisoners and themselves recalled what a huge impression the uprising and escape from the twentieth block made then and how this feat became an example of struggle for all Mauthausen prisoners.

We now know seven prisoners of the death block who survived the uprising. But we can say with confidence that some others must be found. They say that the same SS man who was captured during the May uprising and spoke about his participation in the round-ups of escaped suicide bombers reported that about twenty people were missing from the piles of corpses near the crematorium. No, the score was far from “settled”; the SS men announced this only to intimidate the rest of the prisoners. According to rumors, one of the leaders of the uprising, Major Leonov, survived. It is absolutely known that former lieutenant Mikhail Ikhanov, the same “Tatar Bear” who was an assistant to the bloc’s executioner and who himself destroyed many dozens of suicide bombers, survived the escape. Maybe he still walks on Soviet soil or is hiding somewhere abroad.

Lydia Mosolova from the city of Gomel in Belarus talks in her letter about some two still unknown to us prisoners of the death block who escaped after the uprising. Driven away from her homeland by the Nazis, she worked as a laborer for an Austrian in the village of Schwertberg, seven kilometers from Mauthausen. At about four o'clock in the morning on February 3, the residents of Schwertberg were awakened by the noise of motorcycles and shouts heard on the streets of the village. A whole column of SS motorcyclists arrived and began to search all the houses and barns. After the search, the owner told her farmhands that 500 Bolshevik commissars sentenced to death had escaped from the Mauthausen camp, and were now being sought everywhere. All morning, shots and barking dogs were heard in the vicinity of the village. At about ten or eleven o'clock we walked down the street large group captured fugitives - about 60-70 people - surrounded by a dense ring of SS men. “It was a terrible sight,” writes Lydia Mosolova. “Just skeletons, covered in skin, dressed in striped jackets and trousers, and you couldn’t look at their legs. And they didn’t walk, but barely walked.”

As Lydia Mosolova says, both she and her owner could not help but cry at the sight of these people. And the owner standing next to them - an Austrian peasant - suddenly said with fear in his voice:

We're lost!

His wife asked in fear: why? And he answered:

After all, the Russians will come here. How can such a crime be forgiven?

This entire group of fugitives was taken to the village square and shot there. And then cars arrived from Mauthausen, and the corpses of those shot were taken to the camp.

For a long time they talked about this escape in the area, but gradually all the talk died down, and only in May 1945, when American troops arrived in these places, it became known that in the Windeck farm, two kilometers from Schwertberg, two fugitives had been hiding all this time from the death block. As L. Mosolova reports, they were hidden in his house by an old peasant, whose three sons were in Hitler's army, and one of them even served in the SS troops. Apparently, realizing that the war was lost, and fearing retribution for his sons, the old man decided to soften their fate and provide a service to the future victors. When two fugitives appeared in his yard, he secretly took them to the attic of his house and hid them there, secretly from his family. Just at this time, they say, a son was staying in the house, who served in the SS troops and came to his father on vacation. Perhaps that is why the SS men who were hunting for the fugitives did not inspect this house carefully enough. And until his liberation, for several months, this old man hid and fed his secret guests. Lydia Mosolova says that on May 10, 1945, she talked with one of these fugitives just before he left for his homeland. And she remembers that his name was Nikolai, and his friend was Mikhail. She points out that perhaps more detailed information about these two participants in the uprising and escape can be provided by some residents of the village of Shirokoe, Dnepropetrovsk region, who worked as farm laborers on this farm of Windeck.

We don’t yet know who these Nikolai and Mikhail were. Let's hope that they will make themselves known, just as, perhaps, other surviving participants in the events described above will be revealed. In any case, now we know only seven of the twenty who, as they say, were missing from the Mauthausen SS men who were counting the executed death row prisoners at the camp crematorium.

The search continues. The families of some of the deceased organizers and leaders of the uprising in the death block have already been found. Near Moscow, in Lyubertsy, lives the mother of Hero of the Soviet Union, Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Vlasov. The wife of Colonel Alexander Isupov is in Kazan. The brothers of Kirill Chubchenkov, also colonels, like the deceased hero, live in Moscow and Rostov. The families of Gennady Mordovtsev, former police sergeant from the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Tatarnikov, who fired from a captured machine gun on a tower, were found; Relatives of other participants in the uprising were found.

And the very feat of the heroes of the death block, which with such strength and completeness expressed the high spiritual qualities of our man, covered with such soul-elevating tragic heroism, is now included in the history of the Great Patriotic War, as one of those pages that will forever remain especially sacred and dear to the heart people.